Scratch disk error

Hi all,
An error messages keeps popping up when I open files in photoshop. It says that my scratch disk is full. It even said once that my startup disk is full. I've spent the better part of today troubleshooting, to no avail. From what I understand scratch disks are basically your hard drive and photoshop stores information there when it uses the space for preform commands...? Sigh* So I tried to purge by going to edit>purge. It wasn't an option. I also looked for temporary files to delete manually but could find them anywhere. I'm not sure what else to do and all tutorials are lacking in information. I use photoshop cs5 extended. Any insight would be appreciated.
G

That is an input/output error. Sounds like something is causing the communication to the disk to fail. I've seen this happen with Spotlight indexing other disks, which can be stopped by adding the disk to Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy. But in other cases it may be indicative of the disk becoming too full, or directory issues. To examine the directory of a disk, back it up, and follow these directions on the disk in question:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

Similar Messages

Photoshop Scratch Disk Error OSX 10.7.5

I had a Mac with CS5.5 installed. Suddenly i got an Error Message on Startup: "Could not open a scratch file because the disk is unavailable...."
Unable to solve the Problem I Updated to CS6.0 in hope of fixing the Problem that way. It did not.
So i deleted the User and created a new one which worked, for a while at least. Now i have the same Error again!
After searching around a bit i found this Thread: Re: Photoshop Scratch Disk Error OSX Lion 10.7.3
In this Thread FocusCreative22 found the answer to that Problem. He suggested checking "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" in the Volume Info.
My Problem now is that either through having a newer OS version or only having the Startupdrive i dont have the checkbox "Ignore Ownership on this Volume". How to fix this Problem then?

Chris,
Thank you for responding. I think you're onto something. I looked in disk utility to see if I could repair permissions on the scratch volume, as Lundberg suggested, however the option to do so was greyed out due to this message: "Not available because the selected disk is set to ignore ownership". So I went to the partition, pulled up the Get Info box and saw that the "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" box was not checked. I checked it to see what would happen, and although the option to repair permissions is still greyed out in disk utility, now Photoshop starts up perfectly, even with the problematic scratch partition set as the primary Photoshop Scratch Disk.
Is this the wrong way to get to the right answer?
Concerning your other suggestions, I was able to use Go To Folder to get to the /private folder, and I saw that it said I could only read. I was able to add my user account and give it Read/Write permission through the Get Info dialogue box (I fear Terminal unless I have explicit instructions). Is this what I want? I also looked into the /volumes folder and apparently there is nothing within it, unless the folders are hidden I suppose. I checked permissions of my main drive (startup disk, on which all my applications reside) and they claim that I have read/write privileges. However I'm only viewing this in the Get Info box; is that not the right place to see/alter it? Because this whole time the scratch partition also claimed that I have read/write permissions and that was obviously not true, as it only started working right once I checked "Ignore Ownership on this Volume". But it's incredibly confusing because I could save files to the scratch drive from Photoshop; I just couldn't choose it as a scratch drive.
The short question is: is it ok that I simply chose to ignore ownership on these disks, and that I messed with the /private folder, and/or do I need to do anything else?

Work stoppage because of scratch disk error. The torture continues! Please help!

Hi, everyone:
I would greatly appreciate help.
In December, I began receiving the error message Could not initialize Photoshop because the scratch disks are full. I deleted all the large files from my hard drive, and the problem went away.
Now, I am working on a large Photoshop file (i.e., 585,155kb). I am working at 300 ppi for print reproduction, using multiple layers. I am opening each new image to be added to the master document in a separate Photoshop window. I set the resolution of each at 300 ppi, then crop and transfer to its new layer in the master file (using drag and drop). After I crop and transfer, I close the open window of the file I just cropped and transferred. No other programs are running. This seems to be fairly standard stuff.
All was fine (although very slow) until two nights ago. When cropping, I received the error Could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full.
Once again, I researched scratch disk error messages, and I came to the conclusion I had no choice but to increase my RAM. So, I upgraded from 512MB to 2 GIG. (I successfully opened my PC and installed the RAM myself, confirming it on the Properties window. A major success, as the RAM was costly, and difficult to find, so I saved some money and time by installing it myself!)
With great enthusiasm and excitement, I opened the master Photoshop file again and the next image to be set to 300 ppi, cropped, and transferred over to a layer. But, when I tried to crop, I received the SAME sickening message, Could not complete your request because the scratch disks are full.
How can this be? I have four times the RAM I had before, which was costly, and I expected Photoshop to work swift and smooth with this new, more efficient increase in RAM. I am simply bewildered.
I tried changing my Scratch Disks to C: rather than Startup, but then I received the error message You currently have Adobe Photoshops primary Scratch and Windows primary paging file on the same volume, which can result in reduced performance. It is recommended that you set Adobe Photoshops primary Scratch volume to be on a different volume, preferably on a different physical drive.
More scratch disk torture.
None of this makes any sense, and, while Photoshop error messages are upsetting, they dont explain what you should do. I am not a programmer, and I am totally stumped.
I know that someone somewhere upgraded their RAM and still received a Scratch disk error too, so I hope someone can advise me on what I need to do next. I cannot continue my work and just spent a lot of money on RAM.
Thank you!

Hi, everyone: Thank you for your help with my problem. I appreciate everyones time and feedback, as well as the openness to help and explain (and further explain) what I do not fully understand. I learned a lot more, as Photoshop always introduces new things to learn and figure out. (One has to be part programmer to make PS work!) I appreciated the clear instructions and simple analogies too (for example, the head vs. suitcase was great).
Good news: The Scratch disk error has subsided for now!
I believe (although I am not certain) that the problem was something very simple after all, and I am embarassed. Only time will tell if this was really the culprit, for, if the Scratch disk error reappears later, it may be something else all together that is lurking in the background.
For now, it seems to have been a problem that Peter K.s advice helped me discover...
Peter's advice was to check the crop settings in the option bar for the common mistake of specifying pixels/cm rather than pixels/inch. My setting was correct (pixels/inch). However, I inadvertently used my pixel width number as inches in the Width setting, causing a MUCH bigger file than intended. When I changed the number, the Scratch disk error disappeared, putting me back in business! Thanks, Peter, for pointing me the direction that eventually revealed the problem.
Could it be this simple?
I kept working most of the night to test drive, free of the Scratch disk error for now! I hope the good fortune continues.
The lesson for others may be to check simple settings carefully first, before diving into the deep end of Photoshop.
Meanwhile, the new RAM is speeding up Photoshop considerably, so I feel like it was a good investment and will probably help safeguard against further Scratch disk errors, which I have had in the past. Also, Ive taken everyones advice to consider a dedicated, separate HD for Photoshop Scratch disk use. Ill plan that as a future/next investment. However, technical notes say an external HD isnt a good idea, but I dont have capacity for an internal HD, so it will have to be an external one. I would appreciate any words of wisdom here. Also, I still have to research SATA-II drives too (which are new to me) and ascertain if I can utilize one on my system. It may simply be too old for this technology, if it is new?
If interested, I also tried several things:
(1) Checking the space available on my HD again The pie chart indicated it was approximately half full (there was 46% free space, or 34.38 GB free space). I'll look for more to remove, but it seems reasonable to have 46 percent available, I think.
(2) Checking the need to DEFRAG The Analyzer said a DEFRAG was not needed, and, indeed, the color chart that plotted the files showed only a thin red line or two (red indicates fragmentation).
(3) Searching for more TEMP files to delete. I found 750 MB in TEMP files to delete, so, while not a lot, there were some still there. Previously I followed these directions to safely delete temporary Internet files: Ctrl Panel > Internet Options > General > Delete Files > Delete all offline content. But, when I navigated to C:\Windows\Temp, sure enough, I found more. Directly opening C:\Windows\Temp seems to be more effective. (I have done it that way in the past too, but lately I was trying to follow the "safe" way I had stumbled across recently.)
(4) Checking my Photoshop Memory Allocation, which was already set at 85% (which may be too high, so I may back it down later, but I did not change it for now). I remembered adjusting it some time ago, but I had forgotten by how much!
I also read the links that everyone recommended, as well as numerous other documents I found across the Web. Some introduced still more to learn/understand, of course.
Thank you once again. Ill resurrect or repost if the Scratch disk error haunts me again later, but, for now, a happy ending.

Scratch Disk Error, Disk full

I have photoshop CS5 installed on an iMac and when i try to edit photos it says Scratch disk error the scratch disk is full. I have contacted apple care and they do not know where these files would be to clean them up. Can anybody help me figure this out? Thanks Josh

The rule of thumb I follow to figure out scratch space says to figure on 50 to 100 times the size of your largest file ever multiplied by the number of files you have open. I have seen the scratch file exceed 800 GB once, an admittedly rare occurrence, but it often exceeds 200 GB when stitching large panoramas and the like.
As an example—and stressing that I'm aware that others have even more scratch space than I do—I keep two dedicated, physically separate hard drives as my primary and secondary Photoshop scratch disks and a lot of GB free on my boot drive for the OS. I also have 16 GB of RAM installed.
Additionally, if you only have a single HD, i.e. your boot drive, you'd need it to be large enough to accommodate both the swap files of the OS as well as Photoshop's scratch.

Premiere Elements 4 Scratch disk error / clips off line

Hi,
I am a new user to Premiere Elements 4.0. I have just started teaching Media Studies and am attempting A Level coursework, and am having numerous problems.
1. We have been editing for some time. Today, when trying to access a project (all projects are stored on a designated drive of a school system), a notice popped up saying there was a scratch disk error and the project could not be opened unless the scratch files were put in the My Documents section of the school system. What does this mean? Is the project lost to us for good? I have a copy saved on an external hard drive and the same message popped up.
This occurred after editing successfully earlier in the morning.
2. Projects which will open are appearing with all the clips offline. Where have they gone?! We have changed nothing since our earlier editing session today.
3. In the earlier successful editing session, one group tried to capture some new material. All the new clips they saved appeared as being offline, and then their existing clips went offline one by one.
Any advice / suggestions?
Thanks you so much to anyone who can help explain this.
Sarah (In Panic!)

See your other post,
Hunt

Premiere Elements 4.0 Scratch disk error / clips offline

Could someone explain to me what a scratch disk error is? Also, what has happened when you are in the middle of editing a project and suddenly all your clips go offline one by one? Where are they exactly?
Thanks,
Sarah

Sarah,
The Scratch Disk locations are set in Edit>Preferences, and yes, you can move them.
I/O is Input/Output, and here refers to your physical HDD (hard disk drives) setup. If you, for instance, only have one physical (not partitions) HDD, and it's getting full, moving the Scratch Disks will not likely help. A full cleanup of your system *might* help, depending on what you are able to move off of your drive(s). The FAQ's at the top of the main forum page, have recommendations for system cleanup and optimizing.
Either freeing up more deftagmented space, or adding more HDD's will likely help.
In the Project Panel in PE, you can relink your media. In Pro, it's Rt-click (on the offline file) and "Relink Media." Should be the same, or similar in PE.
Now, if you have not done much editing, since you last did a Save, one thing that might save some time would be to do a Save_As_a_Copy, to make sure you have a backup of your Project. Then, shut it down, without doing a Save. Clean the system up and add an additional HDD, if necessary, then Open your Project (not the Save_As_a_Copy version. If you have not moved your Assets, from when you Imported them, PE should find these and automatically relink. If you have moved them, but the folder structure is the exact same, PE should ask you to relocate the first Asset, and then automatically relink all of the rest. If it's still showing that the Assets are offline, I'd go to the Save_As_a_Copy version (it'll contain all of your edits, up until you did that particular Save) and then just do the manual relinking for each offline Asset. If this does not work, there is something likely wrong with the HDD, on which your Assets are stored. If that is the case, and let's hope not, then you might want to give us the full description of your computer, especially the setup of your HDD's, the I/O. Outline your Project, and where the Assets were located, when you Imported them. This will help users determine the next step.
Good luck, and sorry for the jargon,
Hunt

Scratch disk error plus canvas image error help

so i recently restored my computer back to factory settings .. so my computer doesnt even have any new downloaded app .. i download photoshop cs6 now im getting scratch disk errors ..which i dont see possible if my computer doesnt have anything on it (besides what it came with) my hard drive has 276 gb i only used 33 .. so why am i having this problem?? i made an external hard drive and that has 8 gb ... also its moving very slow .. also its telling me i cant make an new canvas size 1920 x 1020 with an resloution of 300 which i know is possible because i done it before so if anybody can tell me what im doing wrong or how i can fix this problem please .. i need photoshop for work . and this is impossible .. im using windows 7 toshiba

Without going into much detail, the scratch can grow to humongous sizes. In general, figure on 50 to 100 times or more the size of your largest file multiplied by the number of files you have open.
My preference is not to work with less than 200 GB of contiguous, unfragmented available drive space for scratch on a physically separate, dedicated, internal hard drive as my primary scratch disk.
Also consider that if you rely on your boot drive for primary scratch disk, Photoshop's scratch is sharing that space with the swap files of the OS.
That's one of the issues, and it can be be made much worse if you have a faulty drive. A badly fragmented drive would also be a big problem.
As for that external drive with a pathetic 8 GB of remaining available space, you should back it up, store it in a safe place, a get a new one. Any time any one of your hard drives gets to be 80% full or more, you are already in a heap of problem. With that little space left, you should make sure it's not being used even as a secondary scratch disk.
Hard drive real estate is very cheap these days.

Photoshop CS2 scratch disk error

Those of you who have Photoshop CS2 (9.01) installed and have a 2nd internal SATA drive, can you sucessfully set the scatch disk to the 2nd drive (or just a non-startup internal HDD?). This is NOT a RAID configuration.
When I set the scratch disk to the 2nd drive and restart PS, it gives an error on launch that PS can't initialize the disk because it doesn't exist. Well golly, it's right on the destkop, passes the Apple hardware test and disk utility tests and works fine for my 30 gigs of iTunes and all that good stuff. It's been formatted with Apple's disk utility and has one standard Mac OS Extended journaled partition.
My boot drive is partitioned with Bootcamp and has an NTFS partition. Of course I am not selecting that partition with PS but just wondering if that's an additional monkey wrench.

Somewhere in the foggy last couple months, I know that I have read that before.
either the ignore ownership flag needs to be off, you also want to disable spotlight for that drive, though that isn't the reason...
something really simple but not obvious.

Photoshop Scratch Disk Error OSX Lion 10.7.3

I have had Photoshop CS5 installed on my system for over a year, and it worked fine all this time under Snow Leopard. Now that I've upgraded to Lion, Photoshop will not open due to these messages:
Could not open a scratch file because the disk is unavailable.
Could not initialize Photoshop because the disk is unavailable.
The scratch disk in question is an 80gb partition of a 1tb internal hard drive. If I delete the preferences file (by holding down cmd-shift-opt when starting PS) then it starts up just fine. If I go into preferences and reset it to use the scratch disk, then next time I try to reopen the program I get the same 2 error messages and I have to ditch the preferences again.
There is nothing wrong with the disks, I verified them. And anyway, I've been using that scratch disk with Photoshop for the last year with no issues. It was only after I switched to Lion that this started happening.
I need to be able to take advantage of the performance increase that a scratch disk offers. Anybody have any ideas on what's happening or how to solve this?

Chris,
Thank you for responding. I think you're onto something. I looked in disk utility to see if I could repair permissions on the scratch volume, as Lundberg suggested, however the option to do so was greyed out due to this message: "Not available because the selected disk is set to ignore ownership". So I went to the partition, pulled up the Get Info box and saw that the "Ignore Ownership on this Volume" box was not checked. I checked it to see what would happen, and although the option to repair permissions is still greyed out in disk utility, now Photoshop starts up perfectly, even with the problematic scratch partition set as the primary Photoshop Scratch Disk.
Is this the wrong way to get to the right answer?
Concerning your other suggestions, I was able to use Go To Folder to get to the /private folder, and I saw that it said I could only read. I was able to add my user account and give it Read/Write permission through the Get Info dialogue box (I fear Terminal unless I have explicit instructions). Is this what I want? I also looked into the /volumes folder and apparently there is nothing within it, unless the folders are hidden I suppose. I checked permissions of my main drive (startup disk, on which all my applications reside) and they claim that I have read/write privileges. However I'm only viewing this in the Get Info box; is that not the right place to see/alter it? Because this whole time the scratch partition also claimed that I have read/write permissions and that was obviously not true, as it only started working right once I checked "Ignore Ownership on this Volume". But it's incredibly confusing because I could save files to the scratch drive from Photoshop; I just couldn't choose it as a scratch drive.
The short question is: is it ok that I simply chose to ignore ownership on these disks, and that I messed with the /private folder, and/or do I need to do anything else?

Scratch disk errors

Hi Again,
I was in the middle of digitizing some footage and it suddenly stopped and brought up an error message reading "An error occurred finding one or more of the specified capture scratch volume(s). Verify that both audio and video scratch disks are set in the preferences". Which sounds like a very simple error to fix; however, when that message comes up (this happened last week and I couldn't fix it so I just switched drives and that worked until today) it has been digitizing for over 20 minutes on batch and I hadn't changed any settings so I don't understand why suddenly it can't find the disks. I went to system setting and my scratch disks are still there, the disks are still on my desk top so they didn't turn off or lose power, and they both have a ton of memory. Any ideas?
Thanks!
Kelly

This might be a simple fix, or might be the
beginnings of real trouble.
First off, help us help you;
What OS, what version of FCP, what are the drives in
question?
Search this forum for, and download FCP Rescue. It
allows you to save your preference settings, trash
them, and then restore a good set. Lot's to read
there.
IF your other drives are firewire, you might have a
bad cable that intermittently craps out. you might
have some sort of drive failure starting to rear it's
ugly head. you might just have bad prefs.
Sorry for the delayed response! Life intervened. I am running FCP 5 and OSX 10.3.9. So I jiggled the cable per Randy Holder AND I downloaded FCP Rescue 5. I suppose it would have been wiser to do one and then the other as I am now uncertain as to which cured the problem. I was able to finish digitizing my footage without any further hiccups. Thanks so much for directing me to the FCP rescue!
Kelly

Scratch Disk Error Has Occurred on Brand New External HD

Here are my specs:
Mac
OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion
3.2 Ghz Intel Core i3
8 Gb 1333Mhz DDR3 (was running 4 gb. an apple specialist just installed another 4 of Crucial brand. I wanted 16gb, but apparently I got a Mac in mid 2010 when it's finicky about it's Ram. Ugh)
Photoshop CS5 12.0.4 x64
Brand new 1 TB Toshiba External Used Only as a Scratch Disk,
Available: 999.35
Used 848.3 Mb
Files: 73
Folders: 14
Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1 TB internal on the Mac that is checkmarked as secondary Scratch.
I'm working with Jpeg image files, mainly using Batch Processing. This error is usually occuring when I go to save my files, but today it occurred in the middle of using Content Aware. My crop tool is set at 250 resolution, and today I hadn't even cropped yet. Mac was freshly restarted last night and only a few picures edited after I restarted, so all memory should have been mainly purged. (although I had used content aware on one picture last night after restarting, a pretty large corner of a studio backdrop)
Should I be partioning my external? Is this TOO much space? My thinking was an empty hard drive wouldn't have to be searched, but I really probably don't know what I'm talking about.
I never got any errors when I was using my internal HD on the Mac, it was just slowing down after using Batch Processing and Actions. (I edit for a photographer) I do realize I should be using Lightroom. I have Lightroom 3, but I just don't have the time to learn right now, as this is the photographers busy season. After this fiasco and learning there is now soft proofing available in 4, I will make it a mission to learn in the new year!
Please let me know any other questions I can answer for you. Thanks.

Lots of options for ordering on the web.
Here are speeds from a previous post I made.
Internal vs external all boils down to connection type and transferer speed. Here is a clip from the web.
"Bottom line seems to be that a good SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) HDD will often achieve a 70 to 100 MB/s long-term average transfer rate. I don't know for sure what older IDE drives can do, but I know it is less. For an external HDD connected by USB2 (a slower interface than SATA), the rate is more like 30 to 35 MB/s (USB3 is faster, close to SATA II rates). Firewire 400 is a little slower than SATA II, and Firewire 800 (uncommon on PC's but on many Mac's) may be faster than SATA II. IF your external HDD is a SATA II and connected by a good eSATA port to your machine, it probably will exhibit a speed close to an internal SATA II drive."
What I get from this is the speed is increasing as you go from USB -USB2 - SATA - Firewire 400 - USB3 - SATA II - Firewire 800.

Unable to set scratch disk error

I know this has probably come up before but I can't find the topic when I search. The error message says this...."Unable to set scratch disk. The selected directory is on write-protected or non-writable media."
In addition to that, whenever I try to render by pressing either option+r or apple+r I get an error message saying...."File Error: Access Denied."
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

Have you tried...
Trashing preferences?
Run Disk Utility?
Instead of control-clicking on the drive, try control-clicking on the Capture Scratch folder and the project Subfolder and changing permissions.

Scratch Disk Error : Not Enough Space

So I switched my scratch disk to a hdd with 461gb free but am still receiving an error. Is there a minimum requirement for space I overlooked?

anyone have any ideas why I am getting these errors?

CS - Scratch Disk Error, Hanging Crash

Photoshop has started flipping out on me for no good reason. Anything can trigger this 'hanging crash'; it appears to be completely random and regardless of file size, color space, tools in use, or anything else.
I get an error window, then the program locks up, spends at LEAST ten minutes failing to shut down (costing me a lot of idle time), and then finally closes. Force quitting will not speed up its 'crash' or stop it from beachballing. In addition, while it is taking its own sweet time to believe that it's been force-quit, it bogs down the rest of my machine so I can't hardly do anything else. Activity Monitor, however, will not show it as an active/running program.
I've run Disk First Aid and scraped off the preference barnacles, but it doesn't help. There USED to be a way to make the scratch disk bigger (I thought maybe it might somehow be running out of space) but that doesn't seem to be an option anymore.
This is the error window.

Okay, so... I just installed CS4 a little while ago.
I am STILL getting the same issues. Either it will just go into Spinnyball Neverland until I force quit it (which takes a good 10-15 minutes to even clear), or I get the exact same error message above.
No other CS4 products cause this error.... JUST Photoshop. What the fel is its damage? Can't anyone tell me?

Snow Leopard & Photoshop CS4: Scratch Disk Error (app won't open)

Snow Leopard and Photoshop CS4 have at least one incompatibility worth noting thus far. If you have a secondary disc on your system that is setup to be your primary scratch disk in Photoshop's Preferences you might be unable to open your application.
In order to fix that, go to Macintosh HD/Users/YOUR_ACCOUNT/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings/ and remove the Adobe Photoshop CS4 Prefs.psp file
Then Photoshop will open.
NOTE: You must leave your Macintosh HD as your primary scratch disk in Photoshop's preferences until Adobe fixes this issue.

HI Chris,
We are having significant problems with CS4 crashng and not saving work after it has been completed and saved onto our server. I would rather not re-format my machine. Any ideas?
Stephen Walker

Scratch disk error

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